M. Porcius Cato

But the ancients didn't need to understand the symptoms, just to report them accurately. If they accurately report the symptoms of (say) malaria, that's all we need--not that they understand what malaria is, how it is caused, and so forth. Nor do I agree that with clinical medicine we're on much surer ground. Studies show that when hypothetical physical symptoms are given to medical doctors to diagnose (e.g., the symptoms of heart attack and angina) and hypothetical psychological symptoms are given to clinical psychologists to diagnose (e.g., the symptoms of depression and anxiety), the two groups provide equally reliable diagnoses (i.e., there is a high likelihood of agreement among independent raters), both groups recognize the same types of cases to be borderline ones, and both groups recognize the same types of cases to be prototypical. If the categories of one group were less well-defined than the other, this could not be the case. For example, take the hypothetical, poorly-defined category of 'cooties': using such a nebulous category, it's highly unlikely that independent raters would agree about what it is, who has it, who might/might not have it, and who very definitely has it. (Granted, I don't know what the state of British clinical psychology is, so your mileage may vary there; the studies I'm citing were conducted in the U.S.) In any case, I think Neil's assessment of Caesar's personality is probably right, but it's difficult to say for sure. I take seriously Augusta's point that remote diagnosis is very difficult. For example, we're still not even sure what the plague was that killed Perikles and the other Athenians.

If "insanity" is a medical concept (like "angina"), you should be able to find the term in the diagnostic manual used by psychiatrists (DSM-IV). You can't--because insanity is not a medical concept. You might as well talk about "mental cooties".

But almost ALL psychological disorders are "only a matter of degree." The difference between a phobia and apprehension is "only a matter of degree." The difference between depression and sadness is "only a matter of degree." The difference between anxiety and being nervous is "only a matter of degree." But these differences in degree matter when they are taken to an extent such that they interfere with normal social relationships and work. The fact is that Caesar's vanity (to take just one aspect of his character) was taken to a degree that harmed himself and the republic. More generally, though, I agree with you that Christianity--with its celebration of humility, for example--has made it difficult to see Caesar as his contemporaries might have. But even from within Greco-Roman thinking (e.g., Aristotle, if you want a non-Stoic view), there was an acknowledged distinction between humility (bad), pride (good), and vanity (bad). And one doesn't have to be a Greek to figure this out.

Gee, I wonder how many statesmen believed that they knew best what society needed and would have liked to cram their reforms down everyone else's throats? Probably many. Perhaps that's why societies develop LAWS and GOVERNMENT so that competing ideas can be enacted without violence and bloodshed?

Really? So no one in the ancient world was schizophrenic? No one in the ancient world was depressed? No one in the ancient world had anxiety? Or a nervous breakdown? Did you ever read about Bibulus' complete breakdown after the murder of his sons? In describing Bibulus, should we resort to quaint Victorian concepts like "melancholy"? Are we to assume that Elagabalus was just having a "bad day"? This isn't directed to Augusta, but it would also help immensely to actually get the concepts right rather than putting words into Neil's mouth. He never claimed that Caesar was "insane": insanity isn't a psychological concept, it's not even a psychoanalytic concept, it's a legal concept. I understand that some of you are fans of that darling of Venus, but to think that Caesar is not only beyond the realm of normal moral judgment but also beyond the realm of even medical judgment, that's taking special pleading to a whole new level. Now, I admit that Neil's identification of Caesar with narcissistic personality disorder is less than certain. But there is a massive gulf between uncertainty and absurdity, and Neil's claim is only uncertain, not absurd. It's uncertain, too, whether Caesar died due to a slow exsanguination or not, but the hypothesis isn't absurd--like mental disorders, exsanguination exists, it must have existed in the ancient world, and although it's difficult to diagnose from the present, it's possible. Mosquito asked for guesses, and he got one. Who the heck knows, and who cares? I pointed out that Epictetus, a slave, and an emperor, Aurelius, were both Stoics, indicating that Stoicism was a philosophy that appealed to a broad cross-section of Roman society. To read this as "All slaves were Stoics" is just dumb.

Ooops! Thanks GO (and Ruthe). This is great. I wonder where these fractional notations were found.

In case you haven't seen it, there's a cool interview on 300 at Wired Magazine. Money quote: This is a historical film, and technology gave us the tools to render history in ways we haven't seen before. And it wasn't cost-prohibitive. The idea of making ancient Rome or the pyramids -- those could only have been done in very big-budget films. Now, rendering these kinds of images has become less expensive and more accessible. I think you'll be seeing more fantastic images and journeys back in time.

Since the Romans lacked many of our modern medical concepts, it's not surprising they failed to recognize a personality disorder when it was punching them in the face. But I do disagree that the Roman "power elite" regarded Caesar as exhibiting normal cultural values. There were normal cultural values against having statues of yourself put inside temples with the inscription "To the Invincible God". There were normal cultural values against having your own face put on state money. There were normal cultural values against sleeping with your neighbor's wife (and foreign Kings). There were normal cultural values against much of Caesar's early life of debauchery with the Clodian fast-set (even Catullus thought Caesar was over-the-top), and there were certainly normal cultural values against Caesar's late-life delusions of deity. You seem to be forgetting that Caesar not only claimed to be descended from gods, he also fostered a cult to himself as a god. And Caesar's megalomania most certainly was considered dangerous by many Romans, and there was nothing in the Roman world-view that sanctioned such behavior. Rome wasn't Nietzsche-ville; it was the city that rose in defiance of kingly power, and it exacted savage punishment on those (like the son of T. Manlius Torquatus) who broke its laws. You may not appreciate the precepts of Stoicism, Ursus, but it was the dominant world-view in Rome, espoused by everyone from slaves like Epictetus to emperors like Aurelius. If you would consider Caesar from the Stoic perspective, you would realize why Caesar was reviled by educated Romans and why his killers were celebrated by the very "power elite" you suspect to have lauded Caesar.

Ruthe, the link you provided tells us that there was a special notation for uncial fractions, but then it doesn't show us the symbols. What we're looking for aren't the names of the fractions (e.g., one-fourth) but the symbols used (e.g., 1/4).

I have said it once, and I will say it again

I basically agree with Northern Neil's assessment. From the sources I've read, it seems that Caesar had a sense of entitlement, superiority, recklessness, power-lust, and vanity that today we'd call narcissism. If we don't care for the clinical comparison, though, a more philosophical archetype might be Nietzsche's ideal man, who considered himself "beyond good and evil" and whose greatness could only emerge in a violent struggle for power against the mediocre and jealous. (The best literary analogue to Caesar might be the character Gail Wynand in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.) Viewed from this perspective, I don't think there's anything contradictory about the idea that Caesar may have had a genuine desire to improve Rome: if he could add to the glory of Rome, so much more to his own glory--as long as he was properly rewarded, honored, fawned over, and given more power for doing so. Of course, when Caesar felt that he wasn't being sufficiently appreciated (or--gasp!--prosecuted), then he was perfectly happy to put his own 'dignitas' (read: superiority complex) above the republic, above the laws, above the people, even above his own soliders' lives. Viewed from this perspective, there's also nothing contradictory about the idea that Caesar had immense capability. Indeed, for a talented patrician child raised among the dregs of the subura and continually flattered by a house full of women, it's hard to imagine how one wouldn't have a sense of superiority. But the whole Roman system was built around the principle of collegiality constraining any one person from gaining kingly power--and so Caesar (like many other patricians) found himself headlong in conflict with the system. Viewed from this perspective, there's also nothing so logical than Caesar's joy at leading an army, free from the constraints of others, obeyed without question, possessing powers that no ordinary magistrate could possess within the pomerium. Only problem for the republic was that Caesar--after eight years of near regal rule--would have been forced to lay down those powers once he returned to Rome, and nothing in Caesar's character would have welcomed the prospect. In my view, personalities are seldom history-making factors (i.e., I'm no fan of the Great Man school of history), but in Caesar's case, it's hard to dream up a personality and background that was more likely to come into conflict with the republican constitution.

It was carried into law over the veto of a legally-elected tribune of the plebs. Ironically, it was Pompey himself who reinstated the power of the tribunes after the death of Sulla. As far as I know, Pompey never explained this particular hypocrisy of his. One might argue, however, that since the tribune's power derived from the will of the people, the tribunes should not have been able to veto legislation passed by a legal assembly (as Octavius had done to Gracchus), but I don't think there was any law preventing a tribune from doing so. In any case, the story goes that when the tribune raised his veto, the throng protested with such a roar of disapproval that a bird passing overhead fell to the ground dead, and the majority got its way (and some say that Rome was an oligarchy!).

"The power held within the being of Pythagoras' self-will"? Pythagoras was Apollo and could command animals? Are you really serious? I agree with Ursus. The man was a loon and a Hellenic David Koresh.

MPC, do you know which of those sources are other than Maximus, Plutarch, and Appian? I'd be very interested to know. Best I recall, both Seneca and Dio mention Popillius.

And how did the Roman notate their fractions?

Nice post. Details on the death of Cicero have always been problematic, and your suggestion that an interest in oratory might explain some of these discrepancies is an interesting (and, I think, original) idea. Another view is that later writers (e.g., Livy and Plutarch) depended on three lost sources: a Vita by Cicero's secretary Tiro, another by Nepos, and the histories of Pollio, who was a partisan of Antony. As you might expect, Pollio's histories were often regarded with suspicion (see esp Seneca's criticism of Pollio's claims about Cicero). It's also noteworthy that Cicero's defense of Popillius is attested to at least in six different sources, yet all mentions of the case appear in the context of Cicero's death and they are not consistent about the background of this shadowy figure (suggesting that it might have been added for color). In any case, differences between Pollio and Tiro may be the source of later discrepancies. For further material on Cicero's death, there are also the declamations of Capito, Haterius, Murredius, and the histories of Cremutius Cordus and Bruttedius Niger.

According to Ifrah's The Universal History of Numbers, the Babylonians used a positional notation system to denote fractions, and the Egyptians used an eR-symbol to denote the k in k/n. Unfortunately, he doesn't say anything about the Roman and Greek notation for fractions, although fractions were certainly implicit in the abacus they used. Now, are you just being cruel?

Coming from one who is usually so scrupulous about source information, Cato, that remark takes me by surprise! 100% love? Not even 0.1% doubt? I have the sneakiest suspicion that our Cato is an old romantic at heart. It's so true.

Good point. Even a 2-year-old understands the concept "all gone". The question is when people started thinking of "all gone" as a number, like 1 or 1/2, and when people started to symbolize the concept.

That shouldn't be a rhetorical question. There's a straightforward answer: Cicero's freedom to return to Rome was due to the intervention of many prominent statesmen, not just to Caesar. Thus, Cicero was just as much in the debt of Caesar's competitors as he was in the debt of Caesar.

I love this quote!

Film producers, it is strange to say, often have no imagination whatever. Without any LOTR-type embellishments, the battle of Thermopylae has been exciting enough to inspire many generations of students--purely using words. BTW, if the producers really wanted to represent the battle historically, they would have called it "1000" rather than "300". For some reason, people always forget about the 700 Thespians who fought at the 'hot gates.' (Should let SAG know about this slight to the Thespians?)

PP and others have been right to point out the honors done to Brutus by Antony. It's possible to take two different views on these honors. First, one can view them as analogous to Caesar's conspicuous--and probably feigned--grief at the suicide of Cato ("I begrudge you your death, Cato, for you begrudged me the saving of your life"). In this view, it was to Antony's interest to feign grief at Brutus' death insofar as it would help Antony with republican survivors and sympathizers. Second, one can view them as sincere--even reciprocated--feelings between true adversaries. In this view, Antony's calling Brutus the 'noblest of Romans' (at least in Shakespeare) shouldn't be viewed as the epitome of irony that it normally is. A few observations support the second interpretation. First, purely as a strategic matter, an accommodation between the republican and Caesarian causes was desirable: the republicans had domination of the East, whereas the Caesarians had domination of the West. Thus, there was certainly a motive to overcome prior enmity by finding virtues in the other side. Second, it's also important to recall that Brutus simply did not share Cicero's enmity toward Antony (see esp. Ad Brutum, 15 and 16), nor were Antony's policies as consul in any way directed against the Liberators, whereas Octavian's most certainly were. Indeed, Brutus, for his part, was said by Plutarch (Brutus 29) to have claimed that Antony himself might have been numbered among Cato, Brutus, and Cassius had he not been seduced by Octavian. Finally, there is the evidence from the republicans (including the fanatical Catonian Favonius) who survived Philippi: having been defeated, they hailed Antony as imperator but reviled Octavian, and those not put to the death by Octavian either joined with Antony or joined with the last remnants of the republican cause--Murcus, Ahenobarbus, and Sex. Pompeius. Thus, there are some sound reasons to think that Antony might have had some sincere appreciation of Brutus.

The allocation of provinces was up to the senate. There was nothing illegal, unprincipled, or immoral about the Senate extending tenure to a capable governor. In my view, Caesar should have been turned over to the Germans (j/k), but if the senate voted to extend Caesar's tenure, their decision is legally binding.

Re: calculus. A recently discovered writing from Archimedes suggests that he had the basic concepts of calculus (e.g., infinity). See this article. For a slightly more detailed explanation, also see here. FWIW, Mrs. Cato is a much better mathematician than I am, and when we watched a special on NOVA about the Archimedes Palimpsest, she was utterly convinced that Archimedes was using calculus in his proofs. I'm a bit more conservative, but I do grant that Archimedes could have developed his logic to surpass Newton's discoveries.